


agony, the sweetest melody

by voidveils



Series: hetalia  WWII collection [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 99.99 percent pure angst, Depression, Holocaust, Human Names Used, M/M, Not A Happy Ending, WWII AU, hetalia ww2 au, sorry - Freeform, unreliable timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:48:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidveils/pseuds/voidveils
Summary: To the rest of the world, the war is over- but it’s still raging fierce and bloody in the back of Roderich’s mind.





	agony, the sweetest melody

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second oneshot in my wwii au, but you don’t have to read the ameripan one to understand this, they’re all pretty much independent.

1951

The cool autumn evening sinks through Roderich’s skin, hollowing his bones and freezing his blood. Wind sweeps through the town, whipping his hair around his face. He doesn’t react to the cold, though, doesn’t even button up his coat or shift to the side, just continues on down the sandy street. 

The abandoned town is stiflingly silent. The absence of noise grates with an almost physical pain on Roderich’s ears, and he feels as if he might flicker from existence. It feels wrong, in this desolate place, that he is alive and well, unmarked and unscarred in stark contrast to his surroundings. 

Well, almost.

Roderich’s fingers slip under his sleeve to pass over the inked number, and he has to restrain himself from digging in his fingernails in an attempt to rip it out. Even if the number is gone, nothing can remove the true evil he experiences. 

He is blemished and ruined, too, he is no longer pure just as this small Austrian town is not. He does fit in, he knows- he fits in all too well. 

Empty, ruined, pitiful, and decimated. 

As Roderich steps off the road, he stuffs his hands deep into his pockets. Now, he does shrug his coat closer to himself, ducks his head against the gust. It’s too late, however, because the wind has already blown dust into his eyes. They water and he rubs at them furiously to remove the offending particles- but as he comes to a stop outside the ruins of what was once his home, he finds that the water isn’t completely due to sand. 

The house is gone, all that remains is a lopsided pile of stone rubble- all the wood has burned away a long time ago- and the half-formed skeleton of a foundation. The only item left untouched, Roderich sees, is the Nazi flag his father had kept flying on the porch, perhaps the sole reason their family had managed to hang on to land as long as they had. The flag is crumpled and ripped on the ground now, but the horrible blood-red remains. 

Maybe a few years ago, Roderich would have kicked at it in a fit of anger, or perhaps burned it, but now he simply stares listlessly at the fabric. It’s meaningless now, he tells himself, it stands for nothing. And besides, even if he does something what difference will it make? There is no reversing what has happened. 

What Roderich has seen. What he’s done. 

His ears ring with the roar of imaginary fire, the pounding of rain on mud. He ignores it, he’s impervious now to the incessant reminders- but they’re quickly replaced by softer memories of sunshine, family, and music- and that’s somehow even worse. Roderich finds himself begging for the fires back. 

The flame licks at his boots, searing his feet within. He can feel his flesh melting away, and is sure that if he looks down he will see the white of bone. When he does look, however, his boots are untouched and the ground beneath him is cold. 

There is a stain on the crumbled stone closest to him, black in color- but Roderich is sure that once, an eternity ago, it was red with injustice and bright with dying passion. He crouches down and runs his fingers across it, but they come away dry. He vaguely wonders who it came from- the likelihood that it was himself is too strong for his comfort. 

But, then again, not much in this dead town is a comfort. 

Roderich stands and starts to walk through the ruins. With the other houses, he had been careful where he stepped- lest he fall into an underground level- but he has never owned a basement. Maybe if their house had one, he thinks bitterly, he could have hidden. His family might be alive today. He might be free. 

Remember your purpose, he reminds himself, you’re here to find something. 

His foot catches on a shard of ceramic, and he recognizes one of his mother’s teacups. A pink, swirling rose design is still painted on one side, chipped but mostly intact. 

He finds an old painting, unrecognizable through the fire and rain damage, scattered over the floor. A chain necklace that must have belonged to his mother glints in the setting sun, and two old clay pots are still sitting where the back porch once was. The mint plants inside have overgrown and covered the lawn. 

But the object he is looking for is nowhere to be found, and though he searches and searches until the last streaks of blue are gone from the sky and the clouds are alight with fire, he cannot find the silver flute. Perhaps it has been destroyed. The thought fills him with a sadness he can’t explain. He tells himself it doesn’t matter, but the lingering echo of the keys on his fingertips sends a pang of longing through him. 

Other memories of that flute, memories starring a handsome, white-haired solider, are memories he doesn’t allow himself to remember. 

Roderich looks up from his search, fingertips coated in grime, and for the first time notices that the sun has gone down. Now, a sky painted in blood and bruise is all that remains of the previous day’s light. 

He doesn’t have enough time to make it back before nightfall. He’s spent too long in the old town, and now he is stuck overnight- unless he wants to risk encountering coyotes alone. 

The wind has died away, dissipated, and the resulting silence is unbearable. Usually Roderich is able to block it out, but here in the ruins of his home and in the dark, he can’t keep the longing at bay. 

A melody, gray and familiar, trickles thinly through his veins, and Roderich wants to scream. No, he thinks, not music. Anything but music. The horrible diluted traces of a grand dream are more than he can bear. It will drive him insane, he is sure of it. But the melody doesn’t stop, and it slowly drains his blood as it plays through him, replacing it with a melancholy note. It’s an A, his mind supplies. 

And before he knows what is happening, Roderich is on his feet and reaching out for something he can’t see. The music is his lifeblood, the music is clear and cool and fresh, it lifts his head and beats his heart- 

It’s his savior. It’s his freedom. 

But he pulls his hands away from the sky that is fading quickly to black, and calls on the fire within to drown out the music. He cannot, he will not welcome that long-lost time back into his life. 

He will not. 

 

Roderich spends that night in a house farther from the town center, spared from the majority of the damage. A large section is still intact, and the night is warm so he pulls blankets onto the couch to sleep. 

The distant howling of a wolf and the lingering crackle of a dead fire lull him into unconscious. As he fades away, he catches the first star bleeding through the black fabric of the sky. 

 

—

 

The flute is dented and rusted when Roderich finds it the next day, buried in its cracked case under a fallen beam. In most places, the silver coating has chipped off, and there are troubling dents along the head that makes Roderich unsure if it will play well. He doesn’t test it, though, just removes it from the ruined confines of its case and leaves the house- he came only for the flute, he has no interest in the rest of his once-life. 

The wind has returned, and it’s the strongest yet. As Roderich passes through the town center, he is not only assaulted by dust but by ashes- not a single building is standing. 

Soon enough, he passes the town limits and the buildings grow more and more intact (if sparser), until he passes by a house that is entirely untouched by flame or explosive. The door is hanging wide open, though, and what little Roderich can see in the gloom inside is in disarray. Silverware and plates smashed on the floor, paintings torn from the walls, floorboards ripped up. 

He leaves that house behind quickly. 

About two miles down the dusty street, he veers off the path and ducks into the thick of the forest. It’s late autumn, but most of the trees are still clinging to their leaves. He brushes them aside with his unoccupied hand as he walks, but they’re blood-red in color and all he can see in this forest anymore is death. Bloody, garish, cruel death. 

When he arrives at a clearing by the river, he’s surprised that he can remember the way. His feet must have been moving by habit. 

The trees thin and thin until they stop entirely for the small clearing at the water’s edge. The clearing is bathed in orange and yellow and red in the fallen leaves, and noon daylight streaming through the trees casts dancing shadows on the ground. Roaring by at the clearing’s edge is a river, heavy and loud with the remnants of a recent storm. 

As if in a trance, Roderich slowly approaches the riverbank. Sunlight breaks through the clouds and bathes him in golden warmth, but it only draws up memories he’d rather not remember. He can’t stop himself, though, so he sits down on the grass at the base of a weathered boulder and raises the flute to his lips. 

Both he and the flute are rusty with disuse, and he cracks the first two notes, misses a flat- but he quickly falls into a familiar rhythm, and the song then flows with ease. Roderich had thought it would be terrible to hear the music, unchanged and timeless as if nothing had ever happened- but he finds it far more terrible to hear what comes out now. It’s the same song, it’s the same melody, but there’s a heaviness that was never there before. The notes no longer float up on the breeze as golden threads, they ooze between his fingers as black sludge. 

No melody this light should ever be played so somber. Roderich needn’t have feared that the song would remain unchanged- it’s hardly recognizable now. 

Slowly, not even waiting for the song to end, Roderich lets the flute fall from his lips and hang limply at his side. 

The river roars by, louder and louder by the second, the sunlight shifts from inviting to harsh, and the leaves beneath his feet are suddenly burning. Roderich doesn’t move, though, just stands and watches. He wouldn’t mind if the river swallows him up right now, he thinks. In fact, he might welcome the fierce waters. 

Anything, anything, if only for a brief respite from the relentless flames. 

 

—

 

1939

They come for thirteen-year-old Roderich on a Tuesday. 

The day is pleasantly cool, not freezing as Austrian winters can sometimes get but not stiflingly hot, either. Roderich has spent most of the day by the river, soaking in the early fall sunlight and basking in the music dancing through his veins. The rock he is perched on is large, so much that his feet can’t reach the ground, despite that he’s tall for his age. He swings them now, timing their strikes with the quick beat of the music. 

Playing said music is another boy, sitting next to Roderich, lightly griping a silver flute. 

To any observing eye, the duo looks as odd as can be. At sixteen, the other boy is three years older than Roderich, and non-familial companionships of the type are uncommon among teenagers. If they were to converse, the boy would speak clear German, whereas Roderich would sport a thick Austrian accent- but the most astonishing and profound difference is that one of the boys is of the Hitler Youth, and the other is clearly Jewish. 

If they are aware of the fact, however, neither acknowledge it. Roderich continues to sit passively, watching the gentle water trickle by, and the other boy plays on, fingers dancing over the keys as lightly as ever.

When the song comes to a close, fading into the distance with the brilliance of the setting sun and the vibrancy of a city bustling with life, Roderich sits up. 

“Play something else, won’t you, Gilbert?” Roderich implores. 

The other boy, Gilbert, grins. “Sure. What?” He leans into the sunlight, and his hair- at first a peculiar shade of white- reflects the colors of autumn. 

“Something happy,” Roderich replies, and as the music starts up again he slides off the rock. Bare feet land on the grass below, and he throws himself down to lie on the ground. Sunlight streaming through the trees momentarily blinds him, and through his squinted eyes he catches Gilbert’s gaze above him. Gilbert winks merrily, and changes the music into something slower, more provocative. 

Roderich groans. “Stop it!” He calls, and with an obnoxious laugh that breaks the melody for a moment, Gilbert’s song morphs back to the original tune. 

They must stay in the clearing for upwards of two hours- halfway through the flute changes hands- but as the sun passes its zenith Gilbert stops them. 

“They want me back in a few minutes,” he informs the younger boy. 

Roderich sighs, and lets his head fall back onto the grass for a moment before hauling himself to his feet. 

“See you tomorrow?” He asks hopefully, although the question is merely habit by now- neither of the two friends ever fail to show up. 

“Same time!” Gilbert shouts over his shoulder, a comment equally of habit. 

Gilbert leaves at a run into the trees, and the friends part. This time, the flute leaves in Roderich’s hands. 

The walk back home is a long one, and the path to the village is littered with roots and snagging vines, therefore by the time Roderich leaves the forest he’s exhausted. When he arrives at the village, however, all traces of tiredness are immediately forgotten at the sight before him. 

It’s something out of a nightmare. 

The streets are teeming with soldiers. Menacing weapons in their hands, grim expressions on their faces, and bright red armbands marking them as enemy, they march to town in a horrible parade of death. 

Roderich freezes and draws back into the protection of the trees, his grip on the flute tightening. He’s heard of this on the radio, by listening to adults talk, he’s heard of the towns destroyed and people taken. Houses ransacked and children shot on sight. And now it is happening in his town, to his friends, his life? Before he knows what he’s doing, Roderich is out of the concealment of the forest and is sprinting toward his family’s house. He needs to find his mother, he needs to warn her. 

His feet are bare, and sharp stones he’s usually careful to avoid dig into the soles of his feet as he runs. Dust churned up by the soldiers in front of him flies into his eyes. When Roderich reaches the town hall, he ducks inside and sprints faster to overtake the small army- and when he darts out he’s in front of them. He grips the flute even tighter. 

His parents’ house is to the east of the town center, nestled in a small cove of maples just off the main road. It’s open, light, and inviting when Roderich stumbles inside, panting heavily. His parents are standing grimly to the side, and don’t act surprised when they see the panicked look on their son’s face. 

“They’re coming!” Roderich cries, “I saw them, they’re coming for us!” 

His mother simply nods, smiling sadly. “Come here, son,” she says, offering him a hand. When he approaches, she pulls him tight to her chest as they draw back against the wall again. “Play something, would you?” She says, gesturing to their piano. 

“You don’t like music,” Roderich mumbles. 

He doesn’t object, though, and leaves the flute on a shelf in his bedroom before sitting at the instrument. 

It’s a classical piece he chooses, one he knows well enough that playing it is second nature. However, the emotional investment isn’t, and Roderich finds himself so distracted that the music feels flat and monotonous. If his parents notice, they don’t comment. Roderich’s fingers are shaking, he sees, but he doesn’t know if it’s fear or apprehension. 

A, E, G, B♭, and then then there’s a sharp rap on the door, followed by a series of loud crashes. 

Roderich freezes, petrified. 

“They’re here,” he hears his father murmer to his mother, and Roderich thinks nothing could possibly get any worse. 

But then, as he looks up, he sees that the first solider to march into the house is tall, white-haired, and horribly familiar. 

—

That night, when Roderich is standing in the dark traincar with hundreds of silent damned, the music finally draws to a close. It will be years and years before it starts up again, but at the moment he’s too preoccupied with the blood dripping into his eyes to notice the silence. 

The horrible, horrible, ringing silence. 

 

—

 

1951

Five days after Roderich leaves the abandoned town, he arrives in London. 

The city is busy and friendly, all soft corners and clean streets, but for some reason it’s never felt like home to Roderich. The only home he’s ever had, he thinks absentmindedly, are those quiet, melodic, idyllic years before the war. 

His flat is in London, though, and so by any modern standards the city is his ‘home’. Roderich doesn’t mind. London is a city just like any other, he really should be contented just to have a place to live. And he is, really- but there’s always something missing, something that stops him from diving fully into this new chapter of his life. 

It could be so much easier, he thinks, if he didn’t know what that something is. 

His flat is to the north, as close to the suburbs as a flat can get while still remaining within city limits. It’s a quiet, pleasant place by almost any standards, and Roderich really doesn’t have anything against it. The flat is fine, the city is fine, his new life is about as satisfactory as it can ever be. Recently, though, the sinking feeling has grown stronger, and the trip back to his hometown has brought the horrid memories to the forefront of his mind. 

Try to accept it, they’d told Roderich a few years ago, try to move on and someday you can live just as happily as the next person. Oh, but Roderich had hoped, he had hoped desperately that it was the case. He’ll give anything for things to go back to how they were, but he knows now that it’s impossible. If the trip back to his hometown has shown him anything, it’s that this is never going away. 

He can feel the flute in his bag, the end poking his side through the canvas. Why he had the notion to bring it along, he has no idea, but when he had left the clearing he had found himself unable to leave it behind. He adjusts the bag now, and the poking disappears from his side. It’s easier this way to pretend the instrument has never existed. 

The door to the building is painted black, so all the scratches and scuffs it’s collected over the years stand out rather painfully. As Roderich fiddles with the keyhole, he notices that there’s a new one just below the doorknob, and he absentmindedly wonders what made it. 

The door creaks open, and he sighs inwardly at the three steep flights of stairs ahead of him- he’s never been the athletic type. Always too thin, always keeps his nose buried in a sheet of music, his mother had once scolded. 

He quickly bans those memories. 

When he opens the door to his flat, the lights are already on- his flatmate, an Englishman by the name of Arthur, must already be in. 

Arthur and Roderich get along well enough. Both quiet, private men, they prefer not to interact much, a state that’s favorable to both. Arthur has lost much to the war, too, and he doesn’t pry into Roderich’s business just as Roderich doesn’t pry into his. 

So when Roderich arrives late at night after a dubiously explained two-week absence, Arthur barely looks up from his book long enough to tell him, “Rent’s due in a week. Do you have your half?” 

“In the envelope by the window,” is Roderich’s reply, and they leave the conversation at that as Roderich retreats into his room. 

His room is small and sparsely furnished, when he lays the flute on the table it’s the only item other than an empty glass and an old newspaper. The closet where he hangs his coat is just as barren, and when he wanders over to the window, his path is unobstructed by rugs, discarded items, or furniture. 

Outside the window, the view is possibly even less exciting than inside. Down three floors is a dark alleyway, straight up are patches of a clouded sky through the fire escape, and straight ahead is the chipped brick of another apartment building. Old, dark, and unappealing. Not for the first time, he finds himself longing for the beautiful architecture and vibrant colors of a Vienna he’s never seen. 

Even so, he stays at the window until the full moon peeks through the iron beams overhead and the chill seeps through the window and under his skin, staring at nothing. He wonders if there is ever an escape from this torture. 

When the cold becomes too much for him to handle, he leaves the window and his room. 

Arthur is gone, whether to sleep or out of the house to drink, Roderich doesn’t know. But he’s alone now, and he finds it almost unbearably lonely- the silence is there still, pressing down on him with relentless vigor. 

It’s the most horrible thing Roderich’s ever experienced, this impenetrable silence. It’s louder than anything he can imagine, and twice as terrible. With nothing to fill the silence, it consumes him. In a brief flash of desperation, Roderich wildly searches for something to break the stillness. 

Against one wall rests the old piano. 

He hasn’t used it in more than three years, and he really has no plans to now- but for some reason he can’t stop himself from approaching it. Piano was the first instrument he had learned, and was always his favorite. Something about the mellow, rich tones, he thought once; but he hardly remembers what the piano sounds like now. 

When he lifts the cover, the keys are coated in a layer of dust. Cautiously, almost fearfully, he brushes the dust aside and places his hands into position. He hasn’t been cutting his fingernails regularly, so it feels awkward, but it’s a small detail that he easily overlooks. 

The trip back to Austria must have addled with his mind, because he has no idea why he’s trying to play now after nearly a decade of silence. It is going against everything he has been telling himself for years. Nevertheless, Roderich takes a deep breath and, against all of his reasoning, begins.

Instantly, the fire is upon him, ripping into his skin with a ferocity he hasn’t felt in a long time. For a brief moment, Roderich almost revels in it. It makes him feel alive- but that ends very quickly. 

Pained screams ring shrill in his ears, sucking mud and white-hot iron assault his bare feet, gunshots shred the air- and the whole symphony of horror is overlaid by the mournful cry of that silver flute. 

His hands leap off the keys as if electrocuted, but the crescendo of pain doesn’t stop. It just grows fiercer and fiercer until Roderich’s sure it will consume him at last. 

There comes a point, he once thought, when someone is suffering an unbearable amount of agony, that the pain levels off and becomes sane. It’s as if it’s reached its limit, cannot inflict any more damage, then it becomes stalemate and one’s conscience can emerge. In that moment the person is rational, and the agony is simply another fact of life. 

That point comes for Roderich now, but it’s far from a comfort. He can think well enough, but his thoughts are filtered through the irrationality of pain and so only add to his internal anguish. He wants the overwhelming agony back, he wants to get it all over with now in the hopes that maybe, come morning, the world might seem a little brighter. It doesn’t, though, and he is left with an infuriating dissatisfaction as he relents. 

Deceptively calm, he closes the piano. There is no salvation anywhere, if not even music can show him light. 

 

—

 

1939

The day they are forced out of the boxcars is the last day Roderich sees his parents. 

He stumbles over the dead bodies of people he once knew in his haste to follow them. “Mother!” He calls desperately as they are led away, “Father!” 

But a tall German is shoving the barrel of his rifle in Roderich’s face and yelling for him to get in line. It strikes his cheekbone, and as he slides in place, fresh blood is added to the dried. Gunshots from ahead ring in his ears. 

The boy in front of him is crying, arms curled protectively around himself and hair falling into his face. His legs shake, and Roderich is afraid the boy will fall over. 

“It’s okay,” he tells the crying boy, “I’m sure we’ll get back soon.” 

The boy looks up, and Roderich is surprised at the anger in his eyes. “No, it’s not okay!” He yells. “Do you know what they’re doing up there? They’re killing everyone who’s too young to work!” 

“Silence!” An officer yells, smacking the boy’s face. 

When the German moves on, he continues in a softer voice. “You, you’re lucky. You’re tall and healthy, so you can pass for fifteen or sixteen, but me? They’ll kill me on sight!” His eyes drop down, and Roderich follows his gaze to find that the boy’s leg is twisted unnaturally and in a brace. Another ear-splitting gunshot from ahead serves as emphasis to the boy’s statement. 

Suddenly, Roderich is afraid. 

Surely what the boy said isn’t true. Nobody would kill someone for being too young or too weak. 

“No,” says a voice from behind him, and Roderich turns to find a man, tall and almost menacing as he looms over Roderich. The man isn’t addressing him directly, his gaze is focused on an empty point just above his head. There’s an odd, eerie expression in his face that Roderich can’t quite place. 

“They’re not killing us because we’re too young, or too old, or too weak.” The man’s features harden suddenly, and now he meets Roderich’s uncomprehending eyes. “They’re killing us because we’re Jewish, and you had better remember it.” 

 

Nearly half an hour later, Roderich reaches the front of the line. 

He is ordered to strip, and for his horrified expression he is shouted at. Completely naked, he’s poked and inspected until one of the officers nods to the other and turns to him. Coldly, he asks, “Age?” 

Roderich opens his mouth, but hesitates. 

They kill everyone who’s too young to work, the boy had said. 

“Sixteen.” he replies in German, and when the officer eyes him suspiciously he’s panicked that he shot too high. They must believe him, though, because he’s ordered past the officers and into the walled-in trailer of a truck. 

There are already at least thirty people in the small space, all devoid of clothing. He is forced to shove himself up against the wall to fit. It smells like sweat, blood, and salt in the truck, and Roderich shudders in disgust. Three more people are loaded into the area, and then when Roderich is positive absolutely nobody else can possibly fit, the huge door is slammed shut and they are plunged into utter darkness save for the two barred windows. 

Roderich is next to one of those windows, face pressed against a metal bar. Struggling to turn his head, he looks out the window as the truck jerks and starts to move. 

He’s just in time to catch the desperate eyes of the boy with the lame leg, just in time to hear his panicked shout before the bullet lodges itself in his forehead. 

“Next!” The officer calls as Roderich’s truck rounds a corner and the sight is blocked. 

Nothing, however, will erase the memory of the primeval terror in the young boy’s eyes as he screams for Roderich to save him. 

It’s at this moment, jostled against the nameless and faceless bodies of these damned souls, blood trickling down the side of his face and horrified tears gathering in his eyes, that he realizes nothing will ever be the same again. 

—

Two months later, Roderich sees Gilbert. 

He is eating, with his hands because they haven’t provided him with utensils, when he glances up. He doesn’t know why, nothing has caught his attention or prompted him to look- but when he does all questions leave his mind at the pair of eyes he meets. 

Gilbert is standing across the room, motionless as a statue and cold as ice, and at first Roderich has to do a double take to make sure it really is him. It has been so long since Roderich has seen a familiar face that he just stares, neglecting his cold soup. Then Gilbert’s eyes shift almost imperceptibly to meet Roderich’s own. They stay like that for what seems like an eternity, just staring, until Gilbert’s gaze flits away without any acknowledgement. With horror, Roderich realizes that he doesn’t know this man. Gone is the happy, carefree Gilbert he once knew, and in his place is a cold, cruel monster with Gilbert’s face. 

Still, Roderich holds hope as he returns to his food. It can’t be possible that such a vibrant, excitable boy could be reduced to this in such a short time- can it?

His answer comes later that day, when he is climbing those horrible stairs with a heavy iron block clutched close to his chest. Gilbert is on the landing above him, standing rigidly with his gun clasped tightly in one gloved hand. Occasionally, he barks for someone to ‘move faster’, or ‘work harder’.

As Roderich nears the landing, a man falls to his knees, metal block clanging onto the rusted steps. 

“I can’t,” he cries in Yiddish, “I can’t, it’s too heavy.... too heavy-“ 

“Stand up!” Gilbert yells, and Roderich almost flinches at the unforgiving tone of his voice. It’s a voice so unlike his friend that he half wonders if it’s even coming from him. 

The man doesn’t stand. 

Without hesitation, Gilbert has taken ahold of the man, and hauled him over the railing of the stairs. After a moment, his terrified cry is cut short by a sickening thud. 

The line keeps moving, unresponsive- a scene like this is common- but Roderich’s feet are now moving as if in a trance, on autopilot. When he passes Gilbert, he doesn’t look up. He’s not even positive he can. 

That is the last eventful occurrence for a long while. 

Gilbert stays, but he never acknowledges Roderich, and in return Roderich does not acknowledge him. The echoing gunshots and pained howls wear his bones thin and his feet raw, but still Roderich works and Gilbert watches, until the hours bleed into days and the days into months. Still, Roderich is alive, and still, Gilbert is cold.

 

1945

In that fashion, six years pass. 

It is Roderich’s nineteenth birthday. It’s also late at night, and he’s lying on his back on the uncomfortable bunk, still wide awake. Wooden boards dig into his back, and dust falls into his eyes, but he doesn’t close them. 

He doesn’t feel nineteen. He feels a thousand and nineteen, he thinks distantly. He feels like he’s lived through a hundred lifetimes and seen a hundred lives’ suffering. In a way, he muses, he has. 

His thoughts are interrupted by the soft click of a latch and the creak of the door opening. Instantly, Roderich closes his eyes and slows his breathing. The even tapping of boots on concrete mark the visitor as a German solider; he assumes it’s the routine nightly guard. But when the footsteps stop beside him, he feels his blood run cold. 

Is he going to die tonight?

But after a moment, the footsteps recede, and the door closes again. Roderich counts to one hundred before he opens his eyes again, and at first glance everything is unchanged. Then, as he sits up to check again, something at his side shifts slightly. Looking down, Roderich is surprised to find a slip of paper. 

It’s folded once, and he carefully opens it as to not make any noise. The darkness makes it almost impossible to make anything out, so Roderich carefully slides out of the bunk and tiptoes to a window, where the moon’s light is enough to see by. 

Without even reading a single word, Roderich is shocked- it’s written in Gilbert’s messy scrawl. 

Over the years, Roderich has become numb to Gilbert’s presence. Sometimes, he’s almost able to ignore him entirely. Gilbert is now simply a fact of his existence, and Roderich can admit that he hasn’t spared much thought to his old friend. As far as he is concerned, Gilbert is a happy, obnoxious boy with a flute- this cold monster is simply another Nazi. Now, though, it seems as if Gilbert has written him a note. 

Intensely curious, Roderich begins to read- but what he finds does nothing but raise more questions. 

 

‘Soon, my love, a great change is coming.’

 

—

 

1952

Gilbert’s note, Roderich had later found, was referring to the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz that had taken place the previous day. Gilbert had foreseen the end of the war as a Nazi defeat, and cryptically promised Roderich freedom through the note. 

Roderich smiles at the memory now, his cheerful expression a puzzling contrast- for anyone who might see him now- to the silent tears falling down his face. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone seeing him, though; he’s alone in the flat. 

Arthur is gone, has been gone for more than a month now. Ran off chasing romantic dreams with his French lover, maybe- or dead, most likely. Either way, Roderich is on his own once again. 

Tonight, he’s sitting at the counter with a bottle of cheap wine. He doesn’t often drink, but he feels as if he needs it this time- it’s the sixth anniversary of that day he found freedom. 

...and of the day he lost everything. 

Roderich drinks again, and once the fire has faded from the back of his throat he peers down at the liquid in the glass. It’s as red as blood. As red as the blood staining his hands, dripping from his nose, splashed viciously across the rough cement. Roderich tries to block it out, tries in vain to stop the crescendo of horror taking over his mind- but what comes instead is far worse. 

It’s music; bright, happy music that is suddenly the only thing playing through his veins. More specifically, it’s the song that Gilbert had played that day long ago in the clearing, just as upbeat and carefree as it was back then. It’s unchanged and unblemished, and for some reason that is much worse than the blood and guns that once reigned. 

 

Gilbert had died that day. 

Roderich didn’t know it then, but Gilbert had been shot three times by an American solider while running to find him. All Roderich had known at the time was that he had ran out into the night with his fellow enslaved, ecstatic at the prospect of freedom, a smile growing ever wider on his face-

Only to find Gilbert collapsed on the ground, lying motionless in a pool of his own blood. One of the violets that had littered the grass was still clutched in his bloody fist. 

 

He pours another glass so violently that he spills some down the side of the cup. It trickles over his hand, and for one brief moment Roderich is so sure it’s blood that he almost screams. 

In desperate longing for the blissful haze that obscures his mind, he finishes the entire bottle and even goes in search for a second. He stops halfway through rifling through the cabinets, however, because the tears have clouded his vision and he can’t see. His hands are shaking, but when he clenches them into fists it doesn’t stop. 

Pointless, it’s pointless to resist, he knows, and so he falls to his knees on the floor and relinquishes himself to the crashing waves of grief. 

With sick finality, the bottle slips from his fingers and shatters on the tile floor. 

 

—

 

1953

A month and a half later, Roderich is sitting on the edge of the fire escape where the railing has rusted and fallen off. The old silver flute is held lightly in his hands. 

Noon has just passed, but the mid-January storm is so fierce and the sky so dark that it might as well be midnight. Despite the gusts of wind and sleet, Roderich isn’t wearing a coat- a negligence he’s sure he’ll regret later. Now, though, he couldn’t care less. 

Slowly, carefully, he raises Gilbert’s flute to his lips. His fingers instinctively find the keys, and after a moment of hesitation he begins to play. 

Gilbert’s song dances on the wind, surprising Roderich. He doesn’t remember the decision to play this melody. Even so, he doesn’t stop, playing solely from memory- but he knows it’s flawless in technique. Just like last time, however, the tone of the song is all wrong. Too heavy, too somber, it’s almost too weighted for the wind to carry- he is sure it will fall. 

Carry it does, though, and it’s whisked away so swiftly Roderich can’t even wallow in the emotional failure. 

Unlike last time, Roderich plays on through the imperfections. He is growing desperate now to find something, anything of Gilbert that he can hold on to; and for that he’s willing to overlook the horrid nature of his playing. So he plays louder and more forcefully, willing the music to give him even a trace of his only friend. 

Please, please, he begs the flute, but it’s unresponsive. The notes grow long and sorrowful despite his greatest efforts to keep tempo, and as the song grows closer to the end he begins to lose hope. He’ll take anything, anything, he just needs to feel that long lost comfort again. 

Then, when the last notes hang in the air and the sleeting rain once again takes the foreground of sound, he lets his hands fall back to his lap. Dismay floods him. Is this it? 

Is he really gone forever?

As Roderich looks out past the buildings, the rest of his life stretches in front of him as far as he can see, but it’s bland and gray. A vast expanse of future, long and steady- but without Gilbert it holds nothing for Roderich but hopelessness. 

“Gilbert?” Roderich asks the quickly fading echoes of that last chord, silently begging for any reassurance. But he hears nothing in reply except the mournful howling of the wind through the city, and its eerie whisper:

You’re alone. 

You’re alone.


End file.
